From Africa Recovery, Vol.14#4 (January 2001), page 7 (part of article on 'conflict diamonds')

Sharpening sanctions

The Security Council's efforts to choke off the cash flow to African insurgent movements and punish sanctions busters reflects both the increased popularity of sanctions as a tool of UN diplomacy in the post Cold War world and concerns about their effectiveness. In their study of UN sanctions, The Sanctions Decade, Mr. David Cortright and Mr. George Lopez note that the Security Council imposed some form of sanctions against governments or rebel movement 12 times during the 1990s. In contrast, between 1945 and 1990 the UN imposed sanctions only twice -- against white-ruled Rhodesia in 1966 and apartheid South Africa in 1977.

With the increased use of sanctions, however, has come evidence that comprehensive measures, such as the UN sanctions on Iraq or the unilateral US sanctions on Cuba, can have serious humanitarian consequences for civilian populations and neighbouring countries. Despite strong support for comprehensive sanctions against apartheid, most African governments now favour more targeted sanctions, and then only under multilateral auspices. At the South Summit in Havana (Africa Recovery, July 2000) the 133-member Group of 77 condemned unilateral sanctions as a violation of the UN charter. The Non-Aligned Movement joined the debate in early November, when Botswana introduced a General Assembly resolution on behalf of the movement describing unilateral sanctions as a violation of human rights and rejecting them as "tools for political or economic pressure against any country, particularly developing countries."

Both the strengths and weaknesses of sanctions were acknowledged in Secretary General Kofi Annan's landmark 1998 report on the causes of conflict in Africa. "Sanctions," he wrote, "as preventive or punitive measures, have the potential to be an effective tool" in peacemaking. "The multilateral threat of economic isolation may help to encourage political dialogue, while the application of rigorous economic and political sanctions can diminish the capacity of the protagonists to sustain a prolonged fight." At the same time, he noted, "better targeting of sanctions is necessary" if collateral damage to civilians is to be avoided. With war in Africa increasingly a matter of intra-state conflict, the prospect of undermining the financial base of local insurgencies without damaging the national economy is an attractive one. The key, Mr. Annan concluded, "is much more serious enforcement -- by the international community," including making violations of UN sanctions a criminal offence under national law.

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